


A Relaxing Weekend Away from the Job

by cythraul



Category: Real Ghostbusters
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 12:36:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/597836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cythraul/pseuds/cythraul





	A Relaxing Weekend Away from the Job

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Omorka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omorka/gifts).



A Relaxing Weekend Away from the Job

I

In the end, only Janine said yes. Well, Janine and Slimer, but bringing Slimer along to FanCon was a bad plan. Even Ray saw that.

Ray's costume filled a large duffel bag. It took some finagling to get it into the taxi's trunk. Peter had actually prepped popcorn and an easy chair for the occasion. "I can't believe you're planning to go out in public in that," he said between handfuls of kernels.

Janine stood by with her one piece of rolling luggage. "He's right, y'know. You're going to cook in that thing." She eyed the taxi's overcrowded trunk, then shrugged, and hauled her luggage over to Ray. "Here, you can figure out how to get this in there."

Ray just grinned at her. "Oh, but it'll be worth it!" His suitcase was already in the back seat, under a smaller duffel bag full of ghostbusting gear.

Peter looked Janine down and up. She was wearing khaki shorts and a blue tank top. "Where's _your_ costume?"

Janine tapped her luggage with her foot. "Ray convinced me it was more practical to dress light at a summer con. My costume fits in a tupperware."

For once, Peter was speechless.

*

They saw the first cosplayers a few blocks before the con hotel.

Janine watched through one of the taxi's windows. "Three Klingons, the guy from 'God of War', and half of Gryffindor all walking down the street, and nobody even blinks. Welcome to New York."

Ray turned to her, beaming. He craned his neck, to try to spot the ones she was seeing, then looked back to his own window. "Well, they're definitely giving way for that..." He squinted. "Gundam, I think? Pretty close to full size, too."

The con encompassed both a hotel and the huge convention center next to it. Their taxi pulled into the lot just after noon. Janine scooped up the bag of ghostbusting gear without comment, and lugged both it and her rolling luggage across the parking lot, leaving Ray with his Bag Of Costume and his suitcase. "Knock on my door once you're changed."

*

Caleb was hard pressed to believe the ritual specifically called for golden bikinis, but Elder Phakehaush assured everyone it did.

Elder Phakehaush was a Classics major at NYU. Caleb had met him in Intro to British Literature I. His real name was Herman Wei. He was the only one of them who could read the _Liber Cera Inrupta_.

"Is all in readiness?"

That was how Elder Phakehaush talked. _Is all in readiness._ Caleb would bet the Goddess wouldn't mind if he talked like a normal person. He looked around at their makeshift temple, and the four other Celebrants of Ecstatic Consciousness.

There were no windows. The walls were lined with folding chairs, and on every chair twinkled half a dozen tea lights.

On the floor, they'd painted the Ring of Rh-kr, and within it the Shifting Squares of Otuggosh, and the Ninety Glyphs of Yighaurhu, all as the book prescribed.

And around the Ring of Rh-kr lay twelve bikinis of gold-painted aluminum, each with long strips of crimson linen to dangle down from the bottoms. _Two for each of us_ , Elder Phakehaush had said.

Caleb looked at Elder Phakehaush. "All is in readiness," he said.

*

Ray had worked on his costume for months. Peter had started in on the wisecracks from the minute Ray dug the sewing machine out of storage. But it had been worth it.

Donning the suit without help was awkward, but doable. It was essentially a big mascot costume - a fat bodysuit that zipped up in the back, and had detachable paw-gloves and head. Ray slipped it on over a set of longjohns, then performed some minor acrobatics to get the thing zipped up.

The bodysuit was mostly covered by a set of red footy-pyjamas with yellow trim, and a yellow lightning bolt on the chest. A blue blanket tied at the throat formed a cape, and a curled, white-furred tail jutted from the pyjamas' "trap door" seat. The paw-gloves were covered in white fur as well, and the head was that of a shaggy white sheepdog - with an eyepatch. Ray shifted the head around a bit until he could see out through the eye-holes inside the sheepdog's mouth. He turned to the big mirror in the hotel room's livingroom.

Inside the bulky dog's-head, Ray beamed. He was no longer Dr. Raymond Stantz, hero of New York, but Dopey Dog, hero of children everywhere - including his five-year-old self.

He slung his bag of ghostbusting gear over his shoulder, waddled back out into the hall, and slipped off a glove to knock on Janine's door. " _Coming..._ " he heard.

And then the door opened, and Ray was struck by the full force of Janine Melnitz wearing Princess Leia's golden bikini.

She was wearing her purse slung over her shoulder, her glasses, and, well, a few shards of gold and two long, dangling strips of red linen.

There was a long moment of silence. Janine tried to peer into the eyeholes in Dopey Dog's mouth. "You awake in there?" she asked.

"Uh. Yeah." He slipped his glove back on, and half turned, to gesture down the hall behind him. "Let's... Let's hit Artists' Alley before my signing."

*

"There are some disturbed minds on display at this convention, Ray." Janine eyed the painting with her arms crossed.

"I kind of like it!" Ray's voice was only slightly muffled by Dopey Dog's head.

They were standing in a small gallery of auction pieces at the end of Artists' Alley.

Janine squinted at the painting before them. "Are those the Avengers? They're all women. And -" She was interrupted by a wolf-whistle from a passing Space Marine, which she pointedly ignored. "And who are they fighting?"

"The Koopa Kids. And I don't think they're fighting. I think that's a dance-off." He slipped off his dog's-head and his furry white gloves, and turned to the painting's bidding sheet. He put down a bid of $200, then put his costume back together.

Janine gave a wan smile to an ogling Doctor in a dangling scarf, then fished her phone out of her purse. "Your signing is at 3?"

The big white dog's-head swung around to face her. "Yeah, is that coming up?"

Janine nodded. "You'd better get going." She looked around. "I'm gonna take a walk around, and come by a little later."

Dopey Dog nodded. "Sounds good."

*

The dealers' room was a vast hall inside the convention center, with vendors' tables everywhere, and the aisles between them forming a grid. About half the tables stood empty, and the various customers clumped up thickly about the ones that actually displayed wares.

 _First day_ , Janine thought. The con schedule had made it clear there was a lot less _stuff_ on the first day. _Makes sense. Most people have work or school or something today_.

At the north end of the hall, rather than tables, there was a stage, with a few rows of chairs in front of it. A couple dozen people were milling about on the stage, setting up... something. Janine frowned thoughtfully, then shrugged, and moved on.

She spent half an hour perusing DVDs and old VHS tapes, CDs of foreign and obscure provenance, comic books, display-weapons, costume supplies, and porn versions of all of the above. She ended up picking up a few volumes of manga.

She breezed over to the stage, plastic bag of purchases bouncing against her leg. The chairs in front of the stage would be perfectly fine for sitting on and reading her new acquisitions if whatever was on the stage turned out not to be interesting.

She took a seat in the back row, and squinted up at the stage.

 _Human chess_ , she realised. The three-dozen figures, each in costumes more lavish than the last, were mostly lined up in two sets of two ranks, with only half a dozen of them posturing in the no-man's-land in between. Two players sat at off to the side of the stage, with a simple chess set set up on a table between them.

Interesting. But probably not as interesting as _Azumanga Daioh_. Janine checked the time on her phone, then fished the first volume out of the plastic bag and cracked it open.

Four teenagers filed into the row beside her while the chess match was still being set up, all of them muttering angrily. She managed to pick out something about gaming in one of the hotel rooms, and lamenting that they couldn't get "the Davenport Room" this year.

Janine shrugged, and delved into the world of Japanese high school hijinx.

*

They came with everything: toys, magazines, books, video games, trading cards, sticker albums, and every other variety of licensed memorabilia from the _Ghostbusters_ movie. They also came with everything else supernatural related - modern printings of medieval grimoires, books of ghost stories, scholarly textbooks about the occult, and DVDs of "Supernatural". Anything peripherally relevant, fans brought to the table for Ray to sign.

The head of Dopey Dog sat upside down on a chair beside him, his paw-gloves stuffed inside, as Ray signed an endless stream of merchandise. Every signature came with a story about someone's friend's cousin's haunting. Ray heard them all with good humor, and solemnly handed each fan a business card.

"Can I see your PKE meter?" The girl was maybe fourteen, and dressed as Misty from _Pokémon_.

"Sure!" Ray leaned over to fish the little device out of his bag. He was surprised it had taken so long for someone to ask about the equipment. He held the device out a few inches above the table, and clicked it on. The meter's two antennae swung around, lights on their tips blinking as the device began to beep.

"Huh." Ray frowned, eyeing the device. He was getting a dozen small readings all over the place...

Then the murmur, building in his ears for the last few moments, finally broke into his conscious mind. The words _Janine_ and _Leia_ jumped about on a few dozen tongues. He looked up to see the crowd had shifted to encircle Janine's approaching form. Camera flashes flickered all around her, and she paused to let them have their fill. Then she strolled up to the table. "Hey, Ray. You've got quite the little fan club here."

"So do you!" Ray grinned, and gestured at the multitude surrounding her.

And then "Misty" was running away with the PKE meter.

*

" _Stop that Pokémon trainer!_ "

Shouting while running was hard. Ghostbusting didn't tend to involve a lot of running, except for running _away_ , and adrenaline helped with that. _Gotta hit the treadmill next week_ , Ray thought. The Dopey Dog costume wasn't helping.

Janine got out in front of Ray. "Misty" led them out into dealers' room, ducking under tables and weaving among attendees' legs. Janine could follow some of that, but she was bigger than the little thief, and she was in constant danger of fouling her legs on the dangling strips of her costume.

They chased her out the door and across the parking lot, dodging X-Men and Sailor Senshi, but she got inside the hotel well ahead of them.

Janine reached the hotel door a few moments later, with Ray right behind her. They spared a precious moment to look around. The lobby was at the apex of a T-junction, with hallways going off in three directions. There were con attendees everywhere, but no sign of the fleeing thief.

Ray cupped his hands to his mouth. "HEY! Did anyone see a Misty come through here? Red hair, yellow shirt, red suspenders?" A stone angel and a Tetris block both pointed down a hall lined with conference rooms.

Ray looked at Janine. The pair of them looked down the hall. She shrugged. "I'll take the left; you take the right."

*

Ray ducked into the darkened Spickernell Room, and found himself in the middle of a screening of the original _Clash of the Titans_. With only the image of Henry Hamlin riding Pegasus to light the room, Ray looked around, frantically trying to spot his quarry.

What he spotted instead made him momentarily forget his lost PKE meter.

It wasn't uncommon to see young couples snuggling at the backs of such screenings. The couples were usually human, though.

The young woman was wearing a brown jacket and a yarn "Jayne hat", despite the summer's heat. She was pinned with her back to the wall by a swirling mass of peniform tentacles. The woman was grinning from ear to ear, and running her fingers through a clump of the creature's tentacles even as more of them caressed her face.

That was no costume. _Those PKE readings..._

No one else in the room seemed to have noticed anything was strange.

The creature couldn't really be said to "wear" anything, but there were, tangled in among a few of its rippling limbs, a bit of cloth and something that glinted gold. It took Ray a moment to realise it a golden bikini, like the one Janine wore.

Ray reached for the heavy bag of ghostbusting gear hanging from his shoulder, but paused. The young lady didn't seem displeased by the creature's presence. _Should I blast it? Should I leave them alone?_

Finally, he cleared his throat. "Uh, ma'am? Are you okay?"

The woman turned her head slowly, and gave him a dreamy smile. "Something I can do for you?"

Ray blinked. He cleared his throat. "Um. You appear to be in the grips of a Class 5 Corporeal Entity." He tilted his head, and repeated his question. "Are you okay?"

The woman grinned, and looked back at her betentacled companion. "Never better, man. Never better."

Ray eyed the pair of them for another long moment, until the woman looked at him again. "What?" she said. She wasn't smiling this time.

The Ghostbuster slunk out of the room.

II

Janine looked skeptical. "Are you sure it wasn't just a _very_ good cosplay?"

Ray nodded quickly. "It was... er. Sliming!" He fished his cell phone out of the big duffel bag, and dialed.

Someone picked up on the fourth ring. "Ghostbusters! We zap 'em and trap 'em!"

"Peter!" Ray shouted into the phone. "Peter, you've gotta get over here with the guys!"

"Nice try, Ray. You have to get up pretty early in the morning to drag Peter Venkman to a costumed nerd convention!"

Ray clenched his teeth. "Peter, this isn't a joke! I've got Class 5 - maybe Class 6 - Corporeal Entities running around here, and I need some backup!"

"Sure, Ray. Maybe next time you spot one, you should look a little closer for the zipper in the back."

The line went dead. Ray stared at the phone in his hand. "He hung up."

"Uh, Ray?" Janine's voice cut through a growing commotion. Ray looked around, and saw she was standing by the doorway to the lobby, looking out one of the big windows there. A crowd had gathered in the lobby, and more were drifting in from all directions. Janine beckoned Ray without looking back. "Thaaaat might not have been Peter's fault."

Ray jogged over to join her, feeling his stomach sink with every step. There was a purple glow pouring in through window. As Ray got closer, the source of the glow became clear.

The sky was filled with eldritch runes, no two of them the same. They seemed formed of purple energy, and they oozed about on the surface of some invisible dome. The dome encompassed the hotel, the convention center, and about half of the parking lot.

He checked his phone. Zero bars. "Oh, boy..." he muttered.

*

The FanCon volunteer's name was Natalie, and she was clearly scared. But she couldn't help them.

"Look," Ray said. He held out his hands, palms up, pleading. "We don't know if these things all look the same or not. There could be a dozen of them blending in with the guests!"

Natalie nodded - then shook her head. "We don't even really _have_ a way of reaching everyone. We can put the word out to the volunteers that... that there might be tentacle monsters running around. But we can't reach people in their rooms, or wandering around, or outside. And a lot of them will just _refuse_ to get out of their costumes."

"But-!"

Natalie soldiered on. "Some of them didn't bring other clothes, some of them spent hours getting into costume and are counting on staying that way for contests..."

Ray frowned. He looked at Janine, who shrugged. "All right," he said. "We'll have to do this the hard way." He turned, then, and walked away.

*

"So, I'm almost afraid to ask..." Janine waited until the con volunteer was out of earshot. "What's the hard way?"

"I don't know," Ray said without hesitation. His shoulders slumped a bit. "Something showed up on the PKE meter just before that girl took it. It looked like a dozen signals, scattered all over the con. If I could just find her..."

"Or we could let them come to us." Janine's voice rose warningly as she spoke, and she tapped Ray on the shoulder - repeatedly. He turned, and saw -

"Another one!" Ray delved into his duffel bag, and hauled out his proton pack and particle thrower. Quick as he could, he slung the former on his back, over the Dopey Dog suit, and raised his particle thrower. "Grab the trap!" he bellowed at Janine. These things looked corporeal, so there was no telling what his equipment would do to them, but he wanted to be ready with the trap in case it turned out to be a viable option.

"Right!" Janine shouted. She pulled out the trap, and held it at the ready.

Ray aimed his particle thrower carefully as the thing approached. The last one he'd seen hadn't seemed hostile. He didn't think this was the same one; it was shorter, with what looked like a ridge of feathers around the tips of its tentacles. Like the first one, though, it had Leia's golden bikini tangled up in a few of its wriggling limbs "Hello?" he said.

In response, the creature lunged.

" _Ahhhhhh!_ " Ray leaped back a few feet, and opened fire. A beam of charged particles leaped from the tip of his particle thrower, and slammed into the creature.

The creature promptly exploded.

Slime and viscera flew everywhere, covering Ray and Janine, as well as most of the hall for about ten feet in either direction.

 

*

Janine dragged Ray into the Ladies' Room. "All right, cowboy. You're going to tell me everything you know about these things, and I'm going to try to keep my lunch down while I wash up." She turned on the water, fiddled with the knobs a moment to make it warm, then started to splash water and hand-soap onto her face and arms.

"Um." Ray watched her for a moment, a little wide-eyed, then turned away to study a convenient wall. "Let's see. They're solid..."

"Uh-huuuuh..." Janine grabbed a fistful of paper towel, and went to work on her bare stomach.

Ray smacked his palm with his fist. "If I only had Tobin's Spirit Guide... or if I could talk to Egon... Okay. So there's twelve of them. A bunch of them. Not quite identical."

Janine glanced over her shoulder, then wiped down the gold cups of her bikini and the slopes behind them. "Right. Are they plant things? That last one was covered in vines."

Ray frowned. "I don't think so. The first one I saw... they looked like tentacles, or..." He felt his cheeks burning. "Tentacles, yeah."

Janine gingerly detached the linen strips from her costume. She held them up, and considered trying to wash them, then shrugged and set them on the counter. She wet some more paper towel, and started on her legs. "Okay. Tentacles. Corporeal. Vicious, too!" Her voice strained a bit as she crouched.

Ray frowned. He glanced back over his shoulder at her, then shook his head. "I saw one snuggling up to a woman earlier. She didn't seem mind-controlled or anything."

Janine rose, and looked back at him, her eyes a little wide. "By choice? - You can turn around; I'm as decent as I'm gonna be."

Ray turned around. "By choice, yeah. She seemed as interested in it as it was in her." He walked over to the sink himself, and started to wash his hands and face. "Blech. Nasty stuff." He looked down at himself. "There's no way I'm going to get this crud out of these pyjamas."

Janine frowned. "And the bikini?" She raised one red eyebrow

Ray scrubbed the sticky goo from his eyes. "Right!" He gave Janine a pointed elevator gaze. " _Why?_ Why Leia bikinis?"

Janine leaned back against the counter, and crossed her arms. "Okay. Tentacles. Maybe hostile, maybe not. A dozen of 'em. Golden bikinis. All of it sealed under a dome in the sky. Whaddaya got?"

Ray rolled his eyes to the ceiling. He ticked the features off on his fingers. "Not a ghost. Maybe demons? Probably not; the obvious ones aren't as well behaved as the one in the Spickernell Room. Hmm. - That's it!"

He rounded on Janine, who waited, eyebrow up again. Ray beamed. "'Tentacles' usually means we're dealing with the Great Old Ones. But Leia's golden bikini is one of the central symbols of sex in geek culture, and the Great Old Ones don't usually show any interest in sex. Except! One of them - Shub-Niggurath - is known as 'the Black Goat with a Thousand Young'. She's a creature of fertility!"

Janine gave Ray a level, dubious look. "And these young of Shub-Whatever go around in golden bikinis?"

Ray frowned, and rubbed his chin. "Not that I know of, no. But! The Great Old Ones are normally sealed in otherworldly tombs, and can only be released by a ritual." He beamed again. "There must be a cult of Shub-Niggurath gathered here at the con! If we can find them, we might be able to send these beasties back."

Janine nodded. "So how do we find them?"

Ray frowned. "They'd need a large space for their ritual..."

"The Davenport Room!" Janine crowed.

Janine wasn't the only one with red eyebrows to raise. "How do you know?" Ray asked.

"Because I heard a group of gamers complaining that they 'couldn't get the Davenport Room this year!'"

Ray drew in a sharp breath, flaring his nostrils. "Right. Let's go."

*

The world outside their little bathroom was quiet. There were no people around, and no sign of violence - other than the aftermath of Ray's particle blast.

Ray pointed down the hall. "This way. Be ready with the trap." He held his particle thrower at his side, his proton pack still girt over the Dopey Dog suit.

Janine followed behind with the trap in her hand, its long cable slung over her shoulder and the trigger-pedal clasped in her hand. She nodded. "Right."

The pair of them advanced down the hall, and rounded a corner. They took the turn carefully, "slicing the pie". But all was quiet.

The doors of the Davenport Room were closed. Ray took up a combat pose before one of them, brandishing his particle thrower, ready to blast anything lying in wait on the other side. Janine took up a position beside the door, by its hinges - and _pushed_.

The room was quiet.

Ray crept forward. He looked around the room. It was dim, lit only by countless tea lights on chairs lining the walls - and the glowing ritual apparatus in the room's center.

Arcane rings and glyphs glimmered on the floor. In their center stood a round side-table, and atop it, an amethyst sculpture of - _well_.

Janine crept in after him. "Gonna hit the lights," she said quietly. The room lit up a moment later.

There was a groan. Ray turned sharply, bringing his particle thrower to bear. The source of the groan was a young man - maybe twenty - lying on the floor. He was dressed in the ragged remains of a black robe. He groaned again.

Ray turned, and continued his sweep of the room. Janine crouched by the boy's side. "Are you okay?"

The boy blinked a few times, then looked up at Janine with look of bewilderment. "I... think so." A smile tugged at his mouth. "Y-yeah. Yeah, I'm pretty okay."

"What's your name?"

"H-Herman. Herman Wei."

"You wanna tell me what happened here, Herman?"

The boy closed his eyes, and his chest shook with laughter. Then he groaned. "Ohhh, it hurts to laugh. We... we summoned twelve Daughters of the Goddess. And l- lo and behold, they came." He shivered, and groaned again. "I expected the Daughters to be beautiful. ... And I guess they were, in their way." A dopey grin had taken hold of his face.

Ray walked over to stand by by Herman and Janine. "What happened to the rest of the cultists?" he asked.

Herman frowned. "Not sure. When the first Daughters appeared, I saw some of them run away... and then I was distracted." He actually blushed.

Ray looked at the cultist. "Why the golden bikinis?"

Herman blushed harder. "... Because they're hot?"

"All right, Herman. Can you move? It looks like the ritual created some sort of arcane dome over the building." He leveled his particle thrower at the glowing idol on the table. "I've got a hunch it'll come down once I destroy this. But I don't know what's going to happen."

"Awwww..." Herman sat up - gingerly. "I was hoping to track her down for another round."

Janine helped the young cultist stumble out into the hall. Then Ray pulled the trigger.

The fundamental power of the universe, bridled by science, lashed out from the device in Ray's hands, and struck the idol. For a few moments, it glowed a bright yellow from within. The countless tea-lights flared, then went out.

Then the idol exploded. Where it had stood, a vortex of light spun in the air.

The wind began a moment later.

The doors blew inward, and a stream of air yanked at Ray, threatening to knock him over. He walked over to lurk by the wall, beside the door, leaning against the wind until he was out of its path.

It was about ten seconds later that the first of the tentacle-beasts flew in through one of the doors. Sailing through the air as though thrown, it flew right into the swirling light, and vanished. Another followed a moment later, then another.

 _Four... five... six..._ Ray silently counted as eight of the tentacle creatures flew in through the doors and vanished into the light. _We blasted one... but that still leaves one more._

The wind carried on for another minute, then died down. The light went out.

" _Ray!_ " Janine ran into the room the second the wind was gone. Ray waved from beside the door, and she turned to him. "What happened?"

Ray shrugged, and gestured at the table where the idol had been. "I think I sent them home. Or... most of them."

*

The other three Ghostbusters arrived with Ecto-1 and a full loadout of ghostbusting gear.

It took some _extensive_ fast-talk, but they got the hotel's management to authorize a sweep of the building for the remaining Daughter of Shub-Niggurath.

"This is the room..." Peter held a PKE meter up to the door. The whining little device confirmed the presence of a supernatural entity on the other side.

"Shhhhhh." Ray held his finger to his lips. He had traded the awkward and well-slimed Dopey Dog outfit for his uniform. He cupped a hand to his ear.

The sound of rhythmic exertion and carnal delight was unmistakeable.

Peter gave Ray a slightly wide-eyed look, then turned to the door. He raised a fist to rap lightly. When no response came, he rapped harder - then harder still. Finally, the noises inside the room stopped.

A few moments later, the door opened as far as its chain-lock allowed. A young woman peered out, wearing a white hotel bathrobe and a knit Jayne hat. She didn't look pleased. She gave Ray a dire look. "You again. Are you hoping to get _in_ on this, or...?"

Ray blushed. "I take it the... the entity is in there with you?"

A smug grin appeared on the woman's face. She nodded. "And I'll thank you to leave us to it."

The door slammed shut. They heard the deadbolt slam home. It was mere seconds before the rhythmic noises started up again.

They looked at each other. Peter raised an eyebrow. "Should we bust it down?"

Ray gave the door a sidelong look, then shook his head. "No. No, I... think we should tell the management we couldn't find it."  He grinned.


End file.
